


Marotte

by amusewithaview



Category: Batman (Movies - Nolan), Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Crossover, Delusions, Mental Breakdown, Therapy, extreme creepiness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-11
Updated: 2011-08-11
Packaged: 2017-10-22 12:38:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/238082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amusewithaview/pseuds/amusewithaview
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"What are you?" he asked.</p><p>Not 'who' but 'what', and so she answered: "I'm a trick."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Marotte

She arrived in Gotham on a day like any other. There were clouds in the sky, but they weren't ominous, and the sun shone through occasionally, but it wasn't bleak. It was just a day, and the sky was just sky. It wasn't a portent of doom or an upcoming happily-ever-after, not that she would have noticed. She didn't look at the sky, or any higher than knee-level on the nearest passerby.

 

Dawn walked with a confident loose-limbed stride and it was that which saved her. She looked like someone with places to be; she didn't look scared, or like a victim. She wandered (because there was no other word for her meandering, aimless path) into the deepest, darkest part of the Narrows before anyone approached her.

 

"You lookin' for someone?"

 

She looked up at the man, with his dirty coat and dirtier leer, and smiled vaguely. "No… maybe, yes?"

 

He was a bit taken aback by her answer, "Well, which is it?"

 

"I dunno," she replied, looking him in the eye for the first time, "why don't you tell me?"

 

He looked at her bright blue eyes and there was… nothing. No fear, no anger, no worry, not even that blank sheen of hopelessness and despair he was used to seeing on the faces of the whores and junkies. She, this girl, was looking right at him, she knew he was there, but there was no reaction. She was blank.

 

"Sir, are you alright?"

 

The inflection was right, she was even frowning and stepping forward, body-language telegraphing concern. Her eyes, though – still blank. He shivered, "I'm fine, kid. Go on home now," _away from me, you little freak,_ went unspoken.

 

The frown was replaced by another smile. "Home," she said slowly, savoring the word, "what _is_ that?"

 

It was his turn to frown, even though every instinct was telling him to walk away, now rather than later. After a while in the Narrows, you learned to tell the true crazies from the just plain desperate. This girl, cute though she may be, was loony.

 

"Home's where you live," he told her.

 

She nodded slowly. "Oh, well that explains why I don't have one. I don't live, ergo, no home."

 

"Ah, okay, sorry 'bout that." He walked away as quickly as his feet would take him without running.

 

Dawn watched him go, "Nice man. Bad teeth."

 

...

 

She made her way down off the tower in fits and starts. Mind caught up in what she had just seen and body preoccupied with navigating the rickety structure, she had no energy to spare for her sister's friends. Things like _where are they_ and _aren't they looking for me_ fall by the wayside when your brain is stuck on _oh god, the fall, the sound, the light, oh god **why?**_

 

When she reached the bottom, she saw them. They were clustered around something on the ground. Xander holding up Anya, Willow and Tara clutching each other for support, Giles and Spike standing apart, held up by what Dawn could only assume must be prodigious willpower.

She walked up to them, walked past them and fell to her knees beside the broken doll – _limbs splayed in different directions but she's always slept like a dead person, oh god this can't be happening, oh god this can't be **real,** why did she do it, **why?**_ – and reached out to close her eyes.

 

Dawn jumped a little as a firm hand clamped tightly around her wrist, raising her tear-drenched blue eyes to meet angry brown ones. Giles was scowling at her, he looked furious.

 

"What are you _doing?_ " he spat, and Dawn cringed, expecting blame and recriminations – _it was my fault, my blood_ – and could only look at him in shock when he continued, asking a question that would wreck her:

 

"Who are you?"

 

...

 

Dawn looked around curiously. The precinct was busy: calls coming in constantly, people rushing to and fro, that sort of thing. She was reminded of an ant hive, and wondered idly what would happen if a giant magnifying glass appeared.

 

"Miss? Miss, I need you to answer a few questions."

 

She looked back to the caseworker-slash-cop and cocked her head to the side. "Why?"

 

The woman smiled tightly, everything about her looked tight – from the bun holding back her brown-gray hair to the worn suit that stretched across her thick body – "So we know where to place you."

 

"Place me?"

 

"Into a home," the woman explained.

 

"A home? A home… oh, I know about those…" Dawn nodded sagely, then turned back to her perusal of the busy police station. A hand wrapped around her wrist and she jerked back reflexively, looking for angry brown eyes and recriminations that never came – but it was the caseworker, or cop, whichever you preferred, staring at her with calculating dishwater-gray eyes.

 

 _Possibly abused_ , the file read, _psychiatric evaluation may be necessary._

 

 _..._

 

He consulted; at least, that was what they told her. They didn't tell her much. She knew that Dr. Crane worked at the big house on the hill, Arkham Asylum, and that he was developing a reputation as brilliant in some circles and hopelessly corrupt in others.

 

"Hello, Dawn."

 

"Hello."

 

"I'm going to show you some pictures now; I'd like you to tell me what you see."

 

"Okay… frog, car, axe, fire, house, death, flashlight, bat – "

 

"You see a bat?"

 

She frowned at him, "Don't you?"

 

He smiled, "This isn't about what _I_ see, Dawn." His eyes were big and blue, like over-ripe blueberries. "This is very interesting," Dr. Crane told her, putting the cards away. "Why don't we talk a little, tell me about yourself." He sat forward in his chair, and Dawn was reminded of a dog waiting eagerly for a treat.

 

She studied him, "What do you want to hear?"

 

"Anything you want to tell me."

 

 _Lie._ "You want to hear about my family?"

 

"Your file says you have no family."

 

"I don't. Do you want to hear about them?" He nodded slowly, eyes fixed on her while his pen scratched along the surface of the composition notebook in his lap. "My sister fought vampires, her best friends were a witch, a carpenter, and a vampire – "

 

"I thought you said your sister _fought_ vampires."

 

"She did. He was an exception."

 

"Ah, go on…"

 

"She died saving me."

 

"How did she die?"

 

"She jumped off a tower."

 

"Ah."

 

"Then her friends forgot about me and I took a bus here. They won't look for me, I'm not real anymore." She smiled at him, but her face looked like plastic and there was nothing behind her eyes to suggest that it was genuine. "I bleed like a real girl, but nobody remembers my name. When I leave, will you remember me?"

 

"I'm sure I will, Dawn."

 

"I'm not."

 

"Do you want to be remembered?"

 

She frowned at him, "How can you remember something that wasn't there?"

 

...

 

She left the house and walked the streets. Sometimes she came back before her foster-parents-of-the-week called the police, and sometimes she didn't. Each house was the same, each "parent" too weary to expend much energy on one teenage girl, possibly crazy. She started counting time by her appointments with Dr. Crane. One a week she made her way to one of his offices. She always knew which one he would be at, and she was always on time.

 

"Why do you keep running away?"

 

"I'm not running, I just like going for walks."

 

"Why do you like walking, then?"

 

"… I don't know."

 

"Are you looking for something?"

 

"What would I look for?"

 

"Why don't you tell me?"

 

Dawn thought about it, "I'm not looking _for_ something. I think… I think I'm waiting."

 

"Waiting for what?"

 

"Waiting for someone to find me."

 

Dr. Crane frowned at that, "The police find you quite frequently. The only reason you haven't been put into a juvenile detention facility is that you appear to pose no danger to yourself or others… it's not the police, so who do you want to find you, Dawn?"

 

"Someone who's looking for _me_."

 

He noted the emphasis on the last word, "Who would be looking for you?"

 

She nodded, "That's a good question."

 

...

 

One day, Dr. Crane was excited to see her. Dawn's face expressed curiosity at his bright eyes and his too-wide smile, but her eyes were still blank. She settled herself in her usual chair and watched him walk to the door and lock it, then draw the blinds on all the windows. The room has dim, the only light provided by the yellow lamp on his desk.

 

He flipped on an additional overhead light and came around her chair to lean back against his desk. His hands were braced against the slick mahogany edge, each holding a different item: in one, a small spray-bottle; in the other, a piece of cloth.

 

"We're going to try something new today, Dawn," he told her, fairly quivering with excitement. "An experimental treatment recommended to me by my… mentor. I only recently acquired the materials necessary to implement it."

 

"What are you going to do to me?"

 

He looked at her sharply, then relaxed when he realized that it was just a question. "We're going to talk about something new today: what are you scared of, Dawn?" Seeing her blank look, he continued, moving away from the desk and beginning to prowl around the room. "You don't react to anything, you appear completely detached, but you must be scared of _something_. Is it abandonment? Your family-that-doesn't-exist? What scares you, Dawnie?"

 

She flinched at the name, and Dr. Crane grinned, thinking he had won some ground.

 

"So you _are_ scared of something…" he lifted the cloth and covered his face with it, and with the other hand sprayed something in her face. She flinched back from the cool mist settling on her hair and face, and choked when she swallowed some of it.

 

"Dr. Crane….?"

 

"What do you see, Dawnie?" She looked at him and saw a man, she looked around the room and saw a room, she looked down and saw a chair. She smiled: finally her outsides matched her insides.

 

"Nothing, Dr. Crane. I see nothing."

 

...

 

After that, sometimes she was there, and sometimes she wasn't. When people spoke to her she was usually there, it depended really, though on what she wasn't sure. Every so often the not-being-there would spread and she not only was invisible, she was blind and deaf and intangible too. Those times had resulted in her removal from two different houses and the increase of her appointments with Dr. Crane from once to twice a week.

 

"Dawn," the doctor said, "there's someone I would like you to meet."

 

"Alright."

 

He went to the door, and Dawn noticed that his feet dragged and he was mumbling under his breath. On further study, his usually professional appearance had taken a turn for the worse: his hair was lank and his clothing wrinkled, as if he'd slept in them a few times. She wondered over this for a moment, but soon her attention was taken up by the man who entered the room.

 

"Hello, Dawn."

 

She stared at him until Dr. Crane cleared his throat, "Hello."

 

"How are you today?"

 

Dawn cocked her head to one side, frowning: she did not understand the question.

 

For some reason her confusion made the strange man smile. He half-turned to Dr. Crane, keeping both of them in his sights, "When did you administer the toxin?"

 

"Almost three weeks ago, Mist – ah – _sir_."

 

"Interesting." He moved forward, crouching down in front of Dawn's chair and looking her in the eye. "What are you scared of, Dawn? Mister Crane tells me that you cannot see yourself sometimes, though your outward behavior has not changed. Tell me, why do you think you have become invisible?"

 

"You can't see what isn't there."

 

"But you _are_ here, Dawn. I see you."

 

"You believe your eyes?" she asked, somewhat incredulous.

 

"Not always, but you _are_ here. I'd stake my life on – "

 

"Don't. Please don't," she interrupted, sitting forward and grabbing his hand. She ignored the scribbles of Dr. Crane's pen in the background. "Don't stake your life on my existence. _I'm not real_. I'm not a person, I'm _not_."

 

"Then what are you?"

 

She retreated back into herself, and scooted back in her chair, looking out the window.  "Nothing."

 

"You look like something, a girl."

 

"Then I'm a mirage," she tossed off flippantly.

 

He gripped her chin gently, but firmly, and turned her face to face his. Something flickered in her eyes: something cracked and fragmented like a guttering fire, like a broken mirror. "I can touch you, and I can see you. I'll ask you again: what are you?"

 

Not 'who' but 'what,' and so she answered: "I'm a trick."

 

...

 

The strange man, Ra's – no last name, attended the rest of her sessions. He would greet her when she came in, then seat himself in the chair behind the desk and watch Dr. Crane pace around the room. He was usually content to watch, fingers steepled and eyes intent while he observed. Occasionally he would interrupt for clarification or to ask his own questions. Once, and only once, he chastised Dr. Crane openly…

 

"Tell me more about your sister, Dawn." Dr. Crane said sweetly, sending a sly look towards the man behind the desk. "The one who fights… vampires, was it?"

 

Dawn shook her head, " _Fought_ vampires. She's dead, remember?"

 

"Oh yes, how did she die again?"

 

"She took my place as sacrifice to an angry hell god."

 

"Oh _yes_ , I had quite forgotten – "

 

"What is the point of this, Mister Crane?"

 

The doctor flinched at the lack of title, as he always did. "I merely wished to show you the full extent of the girl's _malady_. She believes in _vampires_ , for god's sake! Aside from her seeming immunity to the toxin, I do not understand your fascination with her."

 

Ra's pinned him with an intent stare, "There are more things in heaven and earth, Mr. Crane. Drop this line of questioning, I doubt you have 'forgotten' _anything_ with that steel-trap mind of yours."

 

Dr. Crane seemed mollified at this seeming praise, and returned to his questions. Dawn, however, saw the disdain behind the comment and whispered softly, "Steel traps stay closed…" Ra's smiled at her, and she knew he'd heard. A small warmth kindled in her sternum at his approving smile.

 

Two weeks later Dr. Crane was a patient in his own asylum and Ra's had disappeared. In the commotion of loosed criminals and misfiled paperwork, Dawn's file was shunted to the side and no new psychiatrist was found.

 

She stood outside the fence surrounding Arkham, drawn there again as she was every week on Saturday at one o'clock. Ra's was gone and Dr. Crane mad and neither of them saw her anymore. She pushed her hands deep into the pockets of her sweatshirt, hunched her shoulders against the cold breeze, and started walking again.

 

It was hard to walk when your feet weren't there to touch the pavement.

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. "Marotte" - a prop stick or scepter with a carved head on it. The word is borrowed from the French, where it signifies either a fool's (literal) bauble, or a fad/craze.
> 
> 2\. This is technically supposed to be the first in a series. We'll see.


End file.
